Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to Games Mornings with Me Jeff Grub,
your host from GiantBomb dot com. Thank you for tuning in.
In this episode, we're gonna be talking about reviews for
another Switch to edition release and PlayStation cutting more jobs.
But it's gonna be a good one because we have
Phil Salvador on the show. Phil, how are you doing?
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm doing well. I think the last time I
was on I talked about how I was very tired
but I had tea. That is still true specific time.
This is a little earlier than usual, but I'm fired up.
I'm ready to talk about this impossibly worthy Switch to game.
Speaker 1: But oh man, they they somehow get weirder and wordier
with each of these releases. This is my favorite so
far for sure. We'll talk about that and more here
pretty soon. But yeah, yeah, you been saw you briefly
at GDC. It was great to see you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Your panel was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: What was it like putting that all together and getting
all those great people together and to do a panel.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun because we all know each other.
For context for listeners, we had a panelicle What's New
in Game History, where it was just like, hey, here's
everything happening in the field with museums or emulators or
you know, academic press, like all these little sub fields.
It's a pretty small field. So all of us just
kind of knew each other and it was like, all right,
let's get wes on, let's get you know, trans ray on.
So it was just very fun to see everyone in
one place and get that all through. We could have
trimmed our things by about one minute apiece and left
a little bit of Q and A, but we were very.
Speaker 3: Happy with it. Yeah, I mean, that's that's how it goes.
I'll tell you. I showed up and I did not
feel cheated by the lack of a Q and A.
I was.
Speaker 1: I was glad to get even more content from all yous.
So that was really like, oh man, and each perspective
was so different. You all came at it from different angles.
It just felt like, oh man, we're going from this
to that, this to that.
Speaker 3: Very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. How long were you at the Festival of Gaming
this year?
Speaker 1: It was I left on Wednesday, So I got in
on Sunday night and left on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: So yeah, okay, you didn't get to see the show
floor of all the weird AI crap.
Speaker 1: Now, Okay, my understanding was pretty heavy with that. Yeah,
it was heavy.
Speaker 2: But it was also like all the space that wasn't
leased out by all the companies that are laying everyone
off and have no money anymore was taken up in
like common areas like couches and eighty games. It was like,
I kind of like this, like maybe this isn't not
great for the health of the event, maybe, but it
was a great vibe, so positive things to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, I hope that the people see,
the people running the show see the value and keeping
stuff like that going and just enabling people to connect
because that has always been the most important part of
GDC for sure, So hopefully they can make it make
sense for them. But yeah, that I did come away
from that GDC thinking, yeah, a lot. I'm looking a
lot of people going into these panels about AI and
they do seem very keen on this, So expecting a
lot a lot more stories on that topic going forward,
for sure. Oh lord, yep, exactly exactly. Let let's go
ahead and ge into the show. Everybody, Thank you for listening.
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As far as this show goes, most weekdays, I Jeff Grubb,
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Speaker 3: That includes breaking.
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For all these topics, I'll get the input of a
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with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Hello YouTube.
Speaker 1: All right, we have a lot to get into, so
let's start the morning mess with a couple of review roundups. First,
critic reviews for Super Mario Brothers Wonder, Nintendo Switch To
Edition plus meet Up in Bella Bell Park.
Speaker 2: Scott Jason Super Mario Brothers Wonder.
Speaker 1: It's uh man, that is a lot to say that
it's about equivalent to the Mario Party Jamboree switch To
Edition that had its own subtitle and stuff like that,
and said Jamboree like five times. This one has an
eighty four on Open Critic. It does seem like those
reviews are specifically for the Switch to Edition. Nine out
of ten from Steve C at the six Axis, who
says Super Mario Brothers Wonder. I'm just gonna say Switch
To Edition is a great upgrade to the original game
if you're going to take advantage of the multiplayer modes,
but is far less essential if you're mostly a solo player.
There are some nice additions for the main campaign, but
the seventeen pound price point feels excessive without party play.
Taken as a complete package, however, this makes the already
fantastic game even more wonderful and addresses most of the
issues we had with it. Seven out of ten from
Bobby pashaladis I'm going to say at Console Creatures, super
Mario Brothers Wonder Nintendo Switch To Edition plus Meet Up
in Bella Bell Park is a fine offering from Nintendo,
but it's another switch to title offering enough grade with
not enough substance. And then an eight out of ten
from Alistair Kennedy. Yeah, Kennedy att gffinity. Super Mario Brothers
Wonder Nintendo Switch To Edition is the definitive version of
the twenty twenty three hit, adding four K clarity and
the social heavy Bellabell Park DLC, featuring new minigames, Rosalina
as a playable character, and family friendly additions like a side.
It's a must buy for newcomers and social players, despite
minor visual.
Speaker 3: Upgrades and familiar progression hurdles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one another one of those weird Onesville
where a lot of these improvements are ones that feel
like they.
Speaker 3: You know, probably should just be included in a patch.
Speaker 1: There is a separate patch for this game that includes
some of these things. But then the Nintendo Switch To
Edition does have like a CIS mode. It's they've listened
to some criticisms about what it's like to play this
game local multiplayer that the core game with like little kids.
They've addressed some of that stuff, where like the camera
now can stick just on player one instead of swapping
over to let's say a five year old who's struggling
to play the game, and then everyone has to move.
Speaker 3: At their pace.
Speaker 1: That stuff is cool, and I think that's like a
free upgrade kind of getting this game to you know,
four K. That's okay, that's cool. It already looked pretty sharp,
but I'll take it. That's a Nintendo Switch To Edition feature.
And then this Bella Bell Park stuff, which I've like
gone and seen, but because I didn't, I wasn't able
to play on line, and I wasn't able to set
up a local multiplayer. And there's kind of two sides
to the Bella Bell Park theme park like presentation here.
I couldn't really do anything with any of that stuff.
That's all multiplayer features. So I don't know how to
assess this personally yet. I'll say that they presented this
fill as a multiplayer sort of expansion. They're like, hey,
we have a lot of fun, like kind of party
game stuff and it's okay.
Speaker 3: Is there any single player stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there will be some additions, and those editions are
changes like Rosalina, some new character, enemy characters in the
single player campaign popping up here and there. That kind
of stuff that is interesting, but it's definitely not enough
to justify this for I think most people.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about it?
Speaker 2: Phil, It's really funny. As I was running this through
in my head, my two thoughts that came in first
were like, oh, back in my day, they would call this,
you know, Game of the Year edition or Mario Wonder Gold.
But like, the more I thought about it, it's like, no,
I understand them wanting to distinguish it as its own product.
I get the value of that. And the other thought,
you don't, under any circumstances have to hand it to Notch.
But I remember when Minecraft was blowing up, he was
saying something like this game should get more expensive over
time because we're riding so much and so like, as
I thought about it, it's like, on paper, I get
why Nintendo is doing this. I get why they're doing
it as a separate product with a certain price. But
like I understand it, and I think probably for people
who aren't us, it probably makes sense to build as
a separate product like this. I have to imagine, especially
if there were families who didn't jump on it who
have a switch to now want something to play together.
It makes sense. I get why they're doing this, certainly
more than you know, adding a couple extra levels to
Kirby or whatever happened with that one.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was like remixing some levels with maybe some
fresh levels here and there. Yeah, I mean I enjoyed
that stuff. But yeah, that this feels it is distinct
from that for sure. And you know, like you said,
I get it on paper, and I get it. As
they get ready to release the Mario movie Mario Galaxy,
like that will do exactly what the first game did
and get a huge audience of families excited to go
back to their switch. And now they're switched to be like, hey,
what Mario games have we missed that we can pick
up and what's in the store, and having this game
out there with switch to Edition on the box will
make a difference to them of going, oh great, there
is this new game effectively a new game to me,
and it's got an update and it takes advantage of
the switch to I spend a lot of money on,
so I feel like it's worth whatever.
Speaker 3: Money I'm spending on it. Yeah, that that all makes sense.
Speaker 1: I do think that you know, this switch to Edition
run that Nintendo's been on is you know, for the
audience that has primarily shown up for.
Speaker 3: The switch to so far, which are the enthusiast.
Speaker 1: I think this concept is wearing thin for sure, where
people are like I kind of want more from these things,
or like the promise of real, actual follow up games
and sequels and the idea like hey, where is the
next Animal Crossing instead of Animal Crossing you know, New
World or whatever it is? Yah, yes, yes, Funky Edition exactly.
And I you know, we're getting a little bit antsy
on that side of things, and I think Nintendo is
probably going to see that reflected in the sales numbers
for a lot of these things, unless this one specifically
breaks out to that prime that bigger audience because of
the movie.
Speaker 2: That's a weird contradiction, right, is like for the audience
that wants to spend twenty bucks on this, it's like, no,
this makes a ton of sense. Sintendo's charging that that's
just not who owns Sintendo switch to is right now?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I was thinking about you know, we talked
to the designer of Spiro of the Dragon last year
and he mentioned that, you know, when they were designing it,
I think it was Mark Cerney said, like, hey, design
this for a lower age audience, because right now it's
all enthusiasts. As time goes on, it's going to widen
to a broader family audience. Maybe this would make sense
next year in terms of like actually having some kind
of return and investment.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's a weird place to be in when you're a
family friendly company where everyone who's bought it so far
are the like spend of five hundred bucks sent in
the first month people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And I think you're right that that demographic
makeup of the Switch To owners does slowly more ful
over time. If Nintendo's successfully able to hit the big
points that they're going to want to hit with the
movie with releasing an actual three D Mario and a
Zelda and Animal Crossing and Super Smash Brothers. Every time
they do that, the funnel gets wider and wider and wider.
And having this game just sitting there ready to go,
We've Nintendo's proven that they're able to make games like
that take advantage of those multiple points of people taking
interest in the system and keeping the prices high throughout
the entire generation.
Speaker 3: So that they get the full effect of that excitement.
Speaker 2: If someone shows up two years from now, this is
still the same price. It's still a relatively new game
of them, like that doesn't change exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the window at which a game feels new
is longer and longer than ever.
Speaker 3: I mean this.
Speaker 1: You know, if they released a new Mario two D
platform this year, it would look probably pretty similar to
this game, And why wouldn't it. They kind of are
used to doing that with new Super Mario Brothers are
probably going to go with this asseetic a couple of times.
Speaker 3: So it's like, yeah, well that this feels about right
all right.
Speaker 1: Getting to the other review round up here, critic reviews
for Screamer, which we talked a little bit about on
the BombCast yesterday. This is an anime racing arcade racer
sort of thing and has dual stick controls where you
steer with the front tires with like the left stick
and then you kind of go into a drift with
the right stick.
Speaker 3: I thought it was pretty cool. Not everyone does. Seventy
nine on Open Critic from a bunch of reviews.
Speaker 1: I think I actually, I think it's like a little
bit over ten reviews, so maybe it's still a little
bit early. Seventy two from Phil Iwanuk from PC Gamer,
who says an immaculately, immaculately presented arcade racer with a
thousand good ideas, but the twin stick drifting wasn't one
of them, So yeah, that might be your mileage may
very sort of thing where it kept me very engaged
in the part of the game that I think I
liked the most, But I can see people getting frustrated
by it. Eight out of ten from Luke Riley at
ign tedious characters in difficulty Spikes notwithstanding, Screamer is a
unique and confidently assembled racer that feels like the result
of locking Blur in a room for twelve months with
nothing but a crunchy ros, some description, and then eight
out of ten from Steven.
Speaker 3: Tailby at Push Square.
Speaker 1: Screamer is a bold and exciting arcade racing game that
stands out from the pack. It takes some big swings,
and most of them have worked out, save for a
story that maybe outstays.
Speaker 3: It's welcome.
Speaker 1: The racing itself is unique and challenging, and once you
have a handle on all of its systems, it's very
rewarding to master.
Speaker 3: That's how I feel about it as well.
Speaker 1: With its stylish presentation on top, this is one racer
very much in its own lane.
Speaker 3: Phil this game's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I think I kind of like every time I see
something like this, it's like, man has or have people
in the industry figured it out a way to continue
making arcade style games work and make sense for them,
because I know it feels like for most part, for
the most part, big publishers have decided they.
Speaker 3: Don't make sense.
Speaker 1: So it's like, have smaller studios kind of unlocked some
ideas here in a game that's like, hey, let's match
up anime presentation with arcade racing feels like, oh yeah,
that is one solution you can come at this with
that might that could possibly work, And it seems like
it's working in this case.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't think of specific titles, but I
feel like the last couple of years have been good
for arcade erasers as a genre. I feel like we're
kind of coming around on that. Weirdly, I was thinking
about this. It comes back to I remember, I want
to say it was twenty fourteen, there was a game
that got a kickstarter that was on Steam called Drift Stage,
which that game never came out. All the developers had
kind of a crash out as a whole thing, but sure,
I remember that was one of the moments where people said,
oh shit, we can just make games that look like this.
So I like that. You know, the twin stick thing.
I have not played it. I don't know how that plays,
but I like that this is not carrying water for
the entire genre. It's not like, you know, oh well,
this game didn't work out super well, so there will
never be an arcade racer again. It's going to be
like one of five games that look or act like this.
That makes me happy because it means you can have
different perspectives like I saw someone in the chat mentioned Automolista,
and it's like, yeah, you can have that and a
Ridge Racer and whatever blood you know, like was happening
with Blur and Split Second. Those games like those can
all exist and have their own approach on this stuff.
That makes me really happy. That to me is healthier
than you know, one of these games selling five million copies.
Speaker 3: Or whatever exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's I think you're right that arcade racers
have sort of re established themselves in the last couple
of years. And there's that year where like Burnout not Burnout,
a cruising Blast, and then a couple other arcade racers
like I think a Lego or not only hot wheels
racing kind of came out at the same time there
was a.
Speaker 2: Garfield cart racing game. I don't think.
Speaker 1: Yeah necessarily now everyone was raving about Garfield Cart and
Garfield Cart too, of course. Yeah, that's a genre that
we're I think everyone involved has gone, yeah, we can
make this work. It is cost effective, and we can
play around with the systems here and try new things
and have a fresh idea. Still, not everything's actually been
tapped out, because when we were getting.
Speaker 3: A lot of arcade Racers.
Speaker 1: The idea was, let's just you're either sim or you're drifting,
or you're trying to like look just really cool, and
it's like, could we do more with the controls? And
that has been happening in a game like this is
a really good example of that that I really appreciate.
Speaker 3: The you know, arcade sports is the one where I'm like,
are we going to get those back?
Speaker 1: And you know, I think I hope that we get
to a point where developers that are making these arcade
racers kind of look over and say, hey, can we
make the NBA jams come back? And a bunch have
tried here and there throughout the years, but it just
feels like there's got to be a movement at some
point where a lot of studios kind of wake up
and say.
Speaker 3: EA, is not going to do that anymore. We could
maybe own it.
Speaker 1: What like, we have a lot of experience now, maybe
we can get the funds together to get like an
official license and really go for it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I wonder if we're in a world
where that could happen.
Speaker 2: What do you think I was thinking? Like the market
seems so divided now between like you either have to
make a high end triple A game or something like
that ends up on mobile. Realistically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the.
Speaker 2: Space that is happening where people are doing that. I
never thought I would say this, but it's whatever a
claim is now with they're like the Basketball Classics game
or something, so like, I don't know that that market
exists anymore. I don't know if there's some who's gonna
spend ten bucks on an Arcade sports game. I feel
like if I don't know, like there's I almost want
to say there's more of a chance for success for people,
like not pursuing the license and just making like an
action the Arcadie game people can play, rather than trying
to be like we're gonna make the new NFL Blitz
and work within all the expensive like like likeness rights
and licenses and blah blah blah, versus someone just making
a new sport that is fun to play online with someone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I think you're probably right.
Speaker 1: Captain Seubass is the one I'm thinking about recently where
it's like, that's kind of an Arcadie soccer game that
has this anime presentation and a story mode and that
doesn't need an official license and that works.
Speaker 3: It's like, man, could you do more of that?
Speaker 1: And again, anime and arcade style games working together. I
would welcome more of that.
Speaker 2: What was the soccer one that came out recently that
everyone destroyed and dip at?
Speaker 3: Was that? Oh?
Speaker 2: That was the Rocket League destroyed dip It was min
Max you crushed at right?
Speaker 3: That was? What was that called chat Rematch? Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that that feels like more fertile ground than
trying to make like we're gonna let you play as
Lebron James and he can, like, you know, to capitate
people or whatever they did back in the NBA Jam days.
You get to capitate people in NBA Jam, But.
Speaker 3: If you know what you're doing, maybe, yeah.
Speaker 1: I never can make it happen for sure, but the
kids on the playground swore I could do it. All right, Well,
let's keep going here, Tomadaci Life. The previews were out
for Living the Dream. People seem very.
Speaker 3: Positive on it.
Speaker 1: If you don't believe them, if you don't trust the press,
well you can check it out for yourself. There is
a Welcome version demo. It's the name of the demo.
It's the Welcome Version that's available now. This is from
sal Ramono Akamatsu. A demo for Tomadaci Life Living the Dream,
dubbed the Welcome Version, is now available for Switch via
Nintendo E Shop. Nintendo announced save data from the demo
can be transferred to the full game when it launches.
Players who finish the demo will also receive a hamster
costume for your me character to wear in the full game.
The game is out April sixteenth. I'm good to since
the Nintendo's pretty confident in this game. They're kind of
playing it up, trumpeting up and doing, you know, parading
around for these previews, and the previews went very well,
and this demo ready to go, and it just sounds
that they have a good handle on things where it's like, oh,
the save data is going to transfer. I don't know
if Nintendo's done that all that frequently before. Sounds like
they kind of know what game they have here and
they're doing everything to give it a chance to succeed.
Speaker 3: I'm a big Tomadachi Life fan. Phil any love from
you for the series.
Speaker 2: I've never played it, but I respect and appreciate people
doing things of the Life sims that aren't just trying
to make a SIMS clone as someone who is deep
in that series, and one sees all the panic happening
right now with that and with the future of that
series is and then also saw things like Enzoy that
were just like what if we shove AI into this?
And I appreciate people taking a different perspective on, like,
you know what matters. It's not necessarily like you know,
building a house and accumulating stuff. It's all these like
social story Like that's cool to me as someone who's
never played Timadacien Life, I think that's neat. Do I
understand correctly? I saw on social media someone's saying that
they're was not yet a word filter in this demo?
Is that accurate? Is that I don't want to like
spread misinformation?
Speaker 3: But no, that seems pretty accurate.
Speaker 1: It seems like there it's effective or effectively true to
say there's basically no filter. Now, there's a couple of
reasons for that. This is not really an online game.
It's something that you do mostly just kind of played
by yourself in a silo, and Nintendo has announced you're
like suggested that there will be pretty strict limitations on
I guess taking videos and being able to share those
social videos from the game, like maybe the share button
doesn't work, so Nintendo's not as maybe thinking like, oh,
most people are not going to share something from this
game that's going to make it look bad, So.
Speaker 2: What's about twenty minutes Because that was the fact was
that was how I learned. A demo came out with
somebody posting videos as their me is saying obscene things.
Speaker 1: So yes, you cannot share your screenshots to the Nintendo
app as saying casey, right, that's okay, Okay, that seems
pretty like a I think that's a bad choice. But
I think if it's between them adding a word filter,
because I do want my needs to be able to
say whatever I want, I want to be able to
control that, I'm kind of glad we're getting that functionality.
It doesn't really make sense to put a filter in
there because that can cause some headaches for a game
that is offline and just exists for one person to enjoy.
So yeah, that's I expect that to be the way
it works when it actually comes out. It also seems
like and I've not played the demo yet, but a
lot of the previews were saying that there's a lot
more options for for gender and dating and you know,
in sexual preference, because that was something that was not
just an option in Tomadacci Life for the three ds,
they had it very lockdown to this is one way
that the relationships can possibly work between genders and sexual preference.
So kind of them fixing that is one of the
things people are waiting for, and so it's kind of
been all good news for the Tomadacci Life community. I've
been kind of keeping track of the subreddit there and
everyone looks mostly positive at this thing.
Speaker 3: So far.
Speaker 1: There's a chance this could have a very similar sort
of Pacopia like storyline where you know, we know who's
bought the swing, which too. So far, the audience that
showed up for animal Crossing for the switch one is
has maybe been on the sideline in te Pacopia, and
now having this as another option there, it's like, oh, yeah,
they're going to be feasting in that cozy game community.
Speaker 3: I think, what do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I didn't expect this what happened, but
I appreciate that they seem to be taking based on
what you're saying, being like, here's your toy. You can
play with an approach, and I think that does matter
to people. I think I does you know again, I
the SIMMS is just my reference point because I've spent
a lot of time researching Maxis and getting involved with
that side of things. But you know the fact that
people could go off script and kind of tell their
own stories with it is what made that game catch
on in the first place, instead of trying to railroad people.
So if people can take this thing and say like, oh,
I can do my own story with this, I can,
you know, do my own weird thing where my mes
are into this weird thing and they can express themselves
in different ways like that, to me has the potential
to break out more than something where they are trying
to force you into types of stories you're trying to tell,
or formats or templates. If it can be broken in
a way that people enjoy, like absolutely, that's going to
catch on with the I don't know how we define
cozy games anymore, but self expression games, let's something in
that field.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, Yes, it's definitely just Cozy's become this
detached from the actual definition of the word and kind
of just catch all.
Speaker 2: For uh, well, I people I heard the opposite of
running guns. It's a tendon ment. I've heard people that
kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, You're you're putting things in their place, and
that's a whole genre.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this that it's always had
such a good sense of humor. And we're doing Marry
mutomadoctr right now with Abby and it's reminding me of
like how much fun that game can be and just
letting it sort of do like do its thing in
the background with all the simulations and the relationships and
how it figures that stuff out and the rolls of
the dice that you don't see and creating fun scenarios
that you weren't expecting.
Speaker 3: That's great. It does seem like.
Speaker 1: This game Living the Dream does give you a few
more options to like just pick up characters and put
characters together and having them interact. So if you want
to to have a more forceful hand on the way
characters are hanging out, you can. And I think that's
something that feels like, oh, okay, this is not just
Tomadaci Life four through three DS again and now on
the Switch, which is something Nintendo's often done that's been
the animal crossing really with some minor changes here and there,
it feels like, oh no, they're taking the concept and
expanding it, and I find that to be pretty exciting.
You know, this is a switch one game as well,
I think Nintendo definitely yeah, kind of coming out of
a period in the holidays in earlier part of this
year where I think a lot of people are looking
around being like, what is the what's going to get
me excited to get a switch to? Or why am
I excited that I have a switch to? And there
aren't a lot of answers to that until Pocopia. But
you know, now they have this game. But again, this
is happening before we get a three D Mario, you know,
a brand new Zelda and these games are aren't even
announced Smash Brothers all that stuff. Is this like too
similar of a game to Procopia back to back? Is
there any risks of sort of like one eating the
other's lunch?
Speaker 2: That feels like a gateway drug almost where it's like, hey,
you like Pucopia, do you want this other? Thing? Almost
makes me think like, hey, if you like that. We
added social features to Bella bell Park, Fight Me and
Bella bell Park like I wonder if that's not because
again we've talked about what the audience is for switch to.
I wonder if they are building more of a Oh,
it's a cozy game of complain myself, even if there's
no animal crossing. Directing people to experiences like that is
more fruitful than just trying to be you know, hey,
here's Bonanza two or whatever. The next thing they would
do building that direction is yep.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and take a break. Plenty
more headlines to get to after this. If you want
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Go to giant bomb dot com slash join become a
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We will be right back. All right, it's Game Best Mornings.
That's Phil Salvador. I'm Jeff Grubb. We're getting back into
the headlines with PlayStation shutters first party partner studio Dark
Outlaw Games. This is from Alex Hopley at Game Reactor.
While Epic Games may have taken the majority of the
headlines yesterday after laying off one thousand people and making
the future of Fortnite look a bit bleaker than it
had just.
Speaker 3: A few days ago.
Speaker 1: PlayStation has also apparently made some layoffs very recently. Namely,
the company appears to have shut down the first party
partner studio, Dark Outlaw Games. This comes via Bloomberg's Jason Schreyer,
who broke the news on Blue Sky. This hasn't yet
been officially confirmed by PlayStation or dark Outlaw Games. The
studio was formed by ex Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell,
who had formed another PlayStation studio in the past, Deviation,
which was shut down in twenty twenty four. Schreier reckons
this is only part of the cuts planned at PlayStation,
as the company also wants to take a step away
from mobile development, something that built up over the last
several years. Around fifty people are reported to have been
laid off in total. Yeah, it feels like man, the
shifting landscape and the shifting strategies from a big corporation
like Sony and PlayStation has caused them to constantly be
reassessing the decisions that they made years ago and decisions
that they kind of just made like maybe last year
or the year before. And they're being pretty harsh with Hey,
if this doesn't work or we don't have high expectations
for this, we're just going to cut it off and
move on because we're going to try something different. We
don't really know what that looks like yet. The last
time we heard from from PlayStation really about hey, what
is your idea for how to grow into the future
when they're talking to investors, it was we have ten
to twelve live service games, and obviously we've had a
couple of those come out, and many of them have
not hit. I think, you know Marathon, which we'll talk
about here in a second, Yeah, that like even that,
it's like, oh, that's doing well, but is it doing
well enough to justify Bungie and Marathon's got a lot
of positive word of mouth, and even if that's not working,
can any of these things work? I think that's kind
of changed the tune around what PlayStation feels about a
lot of these projects that it green lighted in the
last couple of years. So what do you think happened here?
What do you think is happening over at PlayStation.
Speaker 2: The way that a lot of this was explained to
me by a friend who is more like the business
side of this is that a lot of companies look
at this kind of thing where they're investing in studios.
It's not thinking about we're going to get product out
of this. They're looking at it almost as just like
I don't know, like corporate cal sheet to an extent
where it's like, all right, let's put one hundred million
into all these studios. One of these or a couple
of these will be a mega hit that will subsidize
all of it. But there's only so far we can
go with that logic before you are just like, this
is the second studio from the same person that they
invested in and then shut down. That is wild to me.
That just seems like a let's throw money at things
and see what happens without I don't know, discipline, Like
that's just that's weird that, Like, I know, there's probably
many stories of studios that we've never even heard of
that founded, got some exploratory funding shut down, But to
have it happening this frequently at this scale from one
publisher is boy, they really just spread They went to
the roulette table and just bet on every single number,
and we're like, hey, we'll win if we get any
number of the roulette table then you know, we'll win something.
So boy, there's it feels if there needs to be
a course correction there.
Speaker 1: That's uh yeah, you know, And I think that's the
question is like what does the course course correction look like?
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 1: I think Sony probably actually doesn't quite know themselves yet.
I do think that that is it all kind of
goes back to explaining many of the choices they are
making right now, including pulling back from releasing games on PC,
at least the single player games. I think they want
to reset the clock and just go into late PS
five and PS five Pro and you know, a post
GTA six world and then into PlayStation six with a
lot of their cards back close to their chest, you know,
like Okay, now, how can we go from here? And
I think they're kind of waiting for Grand Theft Auto
six to come along before they make any long term
decisions about how they should be spending their money, and
so it's like, okay, well, let's cut some costs in
the meantime and then kind of come back to the
table when we're ready.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the future could look like for
a PlayStation.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously they're going to keep doing the stuff
that has worked for them making the console, making it,
you know, for the audience that they've always made their
console for making games for the one that they have
cultivated in the last couple of last decade or so,
which is, you know, big single player, narrative driven action
adventure games with high production values. Obviously that stuff has
all still happened. They've not increased the budget of making
those kinds of games, but they've not decreased it either.
They're going to kind of keep that steady the way
they've been doing it. And if that means it takes
Naughty Dog seven years to release in game right now,
then so be it. But they're going to keep doing it.
It is always the question of, like, we know they
want to grow. They keep saying that that is crucial
to them, Like what does that look like and when
when it is no longer the live service thing.
Speaker 3: It's it's just a set of question marks.
Speaker 1: And I just think across the industry, the sense I
get is them going, is it AI? Do we just
make games cheaper with AI? And they're kind of looking
everyone's looking at each other and they all know the
answer and it's no. But they they're afraid to admit
it because if it's not that, there is no backup
plan right now?
Speaker 3: Does that sound right to you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So my my take on all this is, I don't
know if you've been following or looking at Iicon, but
to me, that is what the future of the industry
looks like. So Icon is the essays new event that
it's not replacing E three, but it's their new event
the doing instead of E three, and it is very
much like an executive summit type event. I think tickets
are several thousand dollars. I'm not going to Icon. I
think it's also invite only, so none of us are
getting invited to Icon. But their panels are not about
like investing in new ips or game development. They are
about like monetizing IP and doing crossovers with like sports
leagues and stuff like that. So, like I think, if
there's a growth play, it's not let's try to make
the new Fortnite, it's let's do God of War again
and make the God of War TV series and make
a new God of War game that's twice as big
as the previous God of War game, and just in testing,
in like doing things that are safe, bigger. I feel like,
is the future of this level of the game midustry
to an extent, Like when we were talking at SGF
we talked about the idea of game publishers as lifestyle
brands and how you can get like accessories that look
like an Xbox or all the you know, Mario branded
stuff like that. Feels like if there's any growth happening,
it's no longer just in, you know, make a new
game and hope it blows up. It's take what we have,
double down on it, make it bigger, make it into
a recurring, evergreen brand. And I wonder if we won't
see more of that. I mean, God, we're getting like
multiple God of War announcements this year.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, I mean they had the God of
War like two D game.
Speaker 3: There's probably a God of War.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a Got of War show happening, and
then there's Got War remakes, and then.
Speaker 2: That they tease something yeah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And then there's something that there might be some sort
of spin off that feels like a new new franchise
but isn't so Yeah, like they are, You're probably right
in that horii A seen as the model that PlayStation's
looking at we have a bunch of different games and
a bunch of different varieties, and then there's the core game,
and you know, it's the mothership style thing.
Speaker 3: Here's the mothership game. Here's all the little satellites that
are poking off of it.
Speaker 1: And one of those satellites, hopefully is another big sort
of thing that could grow into a mothership. And that's
the movies or TV shows. Excuse me, that could be
what a lot of these companies are. I mean, it's
working for Nintendo even so I could see a lot
of other companies being like, that's where we need to be.
Speaker 3: And there is appetite for gaming.
Speaker 1: Ip in Hollywood still, so it's like that's another strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd forgotten about Horizon, but now that you brought
it up specifically, the fact that we have the games
and the remasters of the games, and then the Lego
game and then the like K Pop Demon Hunters Horizon,
it's like, that's the future. I think for a lot
of these big companies really hit on something that's bankable
and then once in a while maybe spending money on
an interstellar and hoping that's going to be another thing
they can then spin out.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and you know, let that be driven by your
biggest studios that you're not afraid to let sort of
run wild with a massive budget until they you know,
until they have one miss and then you know everything's
on fire. But until that happens, they're like, Okay, this
is the strategy.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: That got far away from talking about that got very
far away from talking about dark outlaw games. But no,
that uh yeah that sucks's that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yes, it's right exactly.
Speaker 1: It's I'm gonna wonder what happened there, but mostly it's
going to be. Oh, all of these companies are sort
of pulling back in this moment. You know, there is
a lot of excuses that could they can use of.
We've had years of increased cost and component costs and
people are are all looking around and feeling bad about
the economy, So you can you blame us for cutting jobs?
I think, you know, it seems like there's more to
the story about what than what we know that about
what happened over at Epic with Fortnite and it's layoffs, But.
Speaker 3: We'll have to wait and see. My guess would be
and this is just a.
Speaker 1: Guess would be that, oh, they really did extend themselves
over at Epic and a bunch of different directions, with
directions with lawsuits and big business ventures like the Epic
Game Store, and those are costing the people who made Fortnite,
which was actually successful enough to justify all the investment
it was getting in its employees. But that's not how
that business is going to operate because Tim Sweeney is
going to take these big swings and it's going to backfire.
Speaker 3: But again that's just my guess. I hope we get
more information there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the people who are paying for these over investments
in these wrong directions are the people who are working
on these games, not the people who made this decisions.
Is that's for the story, but.
Speaker 3: Yep, all right.
Speaker 1: Analytics firm estimates that Marathon has sold one point two
million copies, but says only nineteen percent of those are
on PS five. This is from Chris Scullion at VGC.
Marathon has sold one point two million copies, but the
vast majority of those aren't on PlayStation five. According to
a report from game and from a game analytics firm,
Norway based a Linear Linear Analytics estimates that Bungie's online
first person extraction shooter has sold around one point two
million copies, generating gross revenues of fifty five million dollars
so far, despite Bungie being part of the PlayStation studio family. However,
a linear Linear estimates that the vast majority of the
game's audience just under seventy percent is based on Steam,
with around eight hundred thousand copies sold on Valve's PC platform. Yeah,
I think kind of what I was hearing from like
inside PlayStation is, look, this game's selling, all right, It's
not selling enough to sort of ensure the future of
Bungee is unaffected by like the realities of running a
company of that scale with that number of employees, and
just at the.
Speaker 3: Cost that it takes to operate it.
Speaker 1: How much this game would have needed to sell to
accomplish that. You know, there's always this concept of why
are the expectations so high for these games?
Speaker 3: And it doesn't work that way in most cases.
Speaker 1: In a case like this, it's Bungee is this big
and has this many employees. Can we pitch a game
or make a game that can justify our ongoing existence?
And Marathon was supposed to be that, and I think
it needed to sell several million more copies kind of
out of the gate to answer that question immediately. The
strange thing here, I think, phil is that this game
is getting very positive word of mouth.
Speaker 3: People do feel really good about it.
Speaker 1: It feels like it could grow into that sort of
thing where it is the sustainable game that they needed
to be, but it has to be nurtured.
Speaker 3: What do you like, does it get the chance to
have that happen?
Speaker 2: I don't know, just because of the expectation that's been
put out from above, Like if this game maintains this
kind of level of daily active users, that would be
like the greatest success ever in this genre. But like,
I'm glad people are loving and I'm glad it's successful.
I think I had kind of written it off because
of some of the bad press around it, But like, yeah,
I don't know that given the pressure around it, it
will get a chance to grow even in the direction
that it should. Like my thoughts just been like how
quickly until they try to like put Nicki Minaj in
this or whatever? Right, Like that's inevitably with games like this.
This is a very silly comparison, But this has also
been coming to mind thinking about these kind of games.
There's so much expectation put on them. In college, I
was at an event once where the organizer way over
ordered sandwiches, and so we got like palettes worth of sandwiches,
and he was joking like, Okay, everyone has to eat
three sandwiches, and as people would leave, he kept updating
the cat like, Okay, everyone's got to eat four sandwiches,
everyone's got to eat five sandwiches. And just given their
strategy right now, even if this is the most successful
game of its kind, even if it's a huge success
and it has this very dedicated fan base that loves
it and will invest in it, Sony's looking at it
like Marathon's got to eat ten sandwiches right now. And
that's just it was never realistic to put in a
game like this, especially one that again seems to be
targeting a more niche hardcore like the tarkav audience right
on PC.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, these green lights happen years ago.
They happened in a world where like they're looking at
the way games are growing during a pandemic, and they're like, hey,
if we can sort of build this thing and kind
of make the Fortnite of it distraction shooters the way
Fortnite was the Fortnite of of.
Speaker 3: Battle Royale games. We have a strong chance to kind
of capture a.
Speaker 1: Wave, and it's like, yeah, I get the logic there,
but there's a lot of reasons why that might not happen,
and one of them might just be this is a
genre that cannot have a Fortnite like thing. Now, Marathime
does feel like the one that could make that happen still,
but it's going to be a long process and probably
a painful one where it's like people feeling really good
about it right now, then they try some things to
kind of grow and appeal to a wider audience, and
that stuff could easily annoy the people who have shown
up since day one, and then the conversations turned sour,
and then everyone ends up.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, with a headache about this game.
Speaker 1: I don't look forward or I don't envy anyone in
the position of having to sort of navigate these waters
of taking a big ship like this and being like,
we got to find more treasure here with this thing,
where this thing can generate even more revenue.
Speaker 3: That's going to be complicated.
Speaker 1: I would hope that it could just kind of stay
at like, stay what it is, stay true to the
audience that loves it, and let them enjoy it.
Speaker 3: But I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's going to be enough for Bungee,
and especially with Destiny too kind of just obviously winding
down and them not really having a great plan to
bring that back and keeping it making as much money
as it might have at one point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so frustrating because it seems like, and it
already is the kind of game where people say, wait,
holy shit, no, you've got to play this like that's
where like the really organic, sustained growth comes from. That
is awesome. But I bet yeah, whoever is higher up
at PlayStation is looking at that versus the monthly cost
of operating Bungie and is like, be Fortnite faster and
that that's just not productive.
Speaker 3: That's yep.
Speaker 1: There's a there's some conversation here from Olenia about oh yeah,
that the server slam happened so quickly or so assumed
before the release that there wasn't a lot of time
to implement changes that people would have welcomed, and so
it's like people were kind of like I got my film,
Gonna wait and see what happens with updates. They expect
more people to come into this game here pretty soon
if the word of mouth maintains around it. And again
it seems like it's only growing, and we'll probably grow
through this year, so we will see.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Xbox Boss pushes for game Pass overhaul, including Netflix collaboration.
This is from Jonas mackiat Game Reactor. The new head
of Xbox, Asha Sharma, has had a busy start to
the job, kicking off her tenure by promising Xbox's comeback,
unveiling Xbox Helix, which is the new system that's coming
out soon, and launching a feature that's been in demand
for years now. She appears to be working on yet
another project, overhauling game Pass, where it seems we can
look forward to both lower prices and a partnership with Netflix,
at least potentially. According to a report from The Information,
Sharma is apparently considering additional tiers for game Pass, one
of which would be an ad supported tier to provide
access to games at a lower price, essentially the same
model that most other streaming services for movies and TV
shows already use. And speaking of streaming services, the same
report notes that Sharma and Netflix CEO Greg Peters have
discussed various types of solutions for collaborating, with the latter
stating quote, you would have to do it in a
way that.
Speaker 3: Works for the consumer and works for both companies.
Speaker 1: Microsoft still trying to figure out how to make the
game pass bundle with Netflix work for Microsoft. So it's like, Okay,
there's conversations they might make something happen here. I'll say
phil this, I'm slightly surprised that it seems like one
of the points of emphasis is still still game Pass.
I kind of was like, oh, are they just going
to let that sort of ride on its momentum and
stay over there and keep putting new games in there? Obviously,
but you know, it's probably making a decent amount of
money from thirty dollars a month from several million people
still subscribed. I'm sure it's worthy of keeping around from
a business perspective, But is it worth trying to be
like this is still the future and the since I've
getting here, is it at least it's part of their future?
Do you think that that is something they can sort
of I don't know if it needs to be rescued
but sort of reinvigorate the excitement around game pass.
Speaker 2: It's weird because the framing of this makes it sound
like it's almost like they see the problems, like, oh,
we need a bigger audience, let's expand something like Netflix
where we can incorporate it. I'm going to get into
history mode for a second, because I to the Video
Game History Foundation. So we did a big thing last
year about Sega Channel, which was sort of Sega's game
Pass back the day, where it was a monthly subscription
service where you got access to a rotating library of games,
and very quickly they realized it didn't have the growth
potential they expected because the audience that would use a
service like that isn't actually meeting their model of like, okay,
let's back up for a second. Hardcore gamers love it
because it's like, Okay, I get access to all these
games all the time. It's cheaper than buying all these games,
even if it's like an AD supported model, or it's
integrated to something, or it's smaller scale. People who are
like just kind of want a dialli into game just
pop into one when it's on Netflix and play it
and then pop out. They aren't necessarily hungering to play
that mini games right like that, it's I think they
found that like once people had two or three games
that they liked, the smaller casual audience are like can
new owners of Genesis they stop subscribing to say a
chill because it was like, Okay, I've got my games,
I'm good. That feels even more exacerbated right now at
a time when it's like GTA Fortnite roadblocks called duty
Minecraft that that's like you know, the five or six horsemen, right,
I don't know, expanding this to the Netflix audience, I
don't know who that reaches. That, Like, you know, you're
not getting hardcore gamers who want to pay fifteen bucks
a month for an endless library of games. They would
pop in, maybe play something a little bit that they
heard about, and then never revisit it again, like the
existing Netflix game feature. So I think there's like, I
I guess to your point, I think you could sustain
something like game Pass if you just went in on
that audience and like, all right, our audience is the
hardcore players who want, you know, first run Xbox titles
as they come out, who want to get access to
these deeper, you know, cut libraries. That's spending twenty to
thirty bucks per game. I feel like you could go
in on that and just make it a stable, profitable
business instead of saying like, no, we need to target
anyone who's ever ever sniffed a game. We need someone
who wants to, you know, turn on their TV and
have access to a video game. I don't know that
that audience exists apart from the few stable games they
are playing with their friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that is what the core question like
right now is like, oh, they were for a very
long time in user acquisition mode, and that was very clear.
They were keeping the price down, They're making the thing
very appealing. The refrain from if not officially Xbox, but
from the community was the best deal in gaming, and
that the implication there was like, oh, you're kind of
missing out. If you're not a part of this, you
should jump aboard because they're giving us way too much
for what we're paying. That was the concept there, and
then and then that shifted from like, oh, it's not
we are no longer acquiring enough new users. We need
to make more money from the people who are already here,
So then the price increases came, and they came kind
of faster than I think a lot of people were
maybe expecting or maybe not, but it shot up to
thirty dollars now for game Pass ultimately, and it's clearly like, okay,
now we are in revenue generating mode.
Speaker 3: So it's like, is.
Speaker 1: The implication here that Sharma is going back to user
acquisition mode and so with prices could come down and
they will make it feel like a really good deal. Again,
what is the potential to add new users? I think
there's so many hurdles. I mean, you're talking about just
the kind of person who has subscribed to Netflix. Are
they interested in a game? Let's say they are. Are
they not already getting satisfied from the games.
Speaker 3: On their phone? They probably are.
Speaker 1: If they're not, do they have a controller that's connected
to their TV that they're going to stream a game
to just sitting on their coffee table?
Speaker 3: Probably not.
Speaker 1: Like there is a last mile problem here that has
not been solved from the game streaming side of things,
if that's what Xbox is primarily talking about, which I
think they would be, that no one is solved of, Like, hey,
how do we just like, get these people know not
to just have a controller, but to connect it via
bluetooth to their television, something that just is not a
natural thing for most people to do. And if they
don't have that, do we have do we have an
alternative for them to access these games where they can
maybe control it with their phone. And at that point,
who's going to really be thinking that this is a valuable,
available use of their time and their subscription money.
Speaker 3: Probably not a lot.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, yeah, I don't know if game Pass has
the juice to move past like the thirty thirty five
million subscribers that it got at its peak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I maybe that's fine to be in that
place like that, I think would be a comfort place
for a service. I saw Death Metal Dan Art in
chat was saying something to the effect of like, and
I felt this way too, that like the value of
game Pass was getting access to like indies and things
you haven't played. When I got a series ex, I
was like, I'll sign up for game Pass, what the
hell give it a shot, And it was like, Wow,
I can play all the Persona games now for whatever.
There's like cheap prices. I don't think someone who is
just like subscribed to Netflix and isn't super interested in
that level of game is going to be moved by that.
So like, yeah, I don't know that user acquisition makes
sense for game Pass anymore. But I think there is
a world where they can double down on who the
actual audience is. I just don't know if or how
we get there, or if the new Xbox team seems
to share that perception of where the market is.
Speaker 1: Next up, the ram Apocalypse is already claiming its first
PC gaming handheld. This is from Darren Bonthus at game Spot.
Essentially here in EO has suspended preorders and early birds
sales of its upcoming next to handheld to address escalating
expenses for components. Basically like, hey, we came back after
Chinese New Year, caught up with our partners, and in
that time that we were off, the prices on everything
went up astronomically, and we're just not gonna be able
to make this thing make sense anymore.
Speaker 3: This is very like there was a.
Speaker 1: Time where we were getting so many of these company
like I and EO was putting out a ton of
varia of like varied handhelds in one year, and that
was because components were, you know, they were priced.
Speaker 3: Competitively, and this stuff could make sense.
Speaker 1: Affordable computing was a reality that we had achieved, and
now that's gone. It's just kind of gone in a flash.
And so this is probably not gonna be the first victim.
I think it's going to be the kind of thing
where you need to be able to pair up your
handheld with a service that generates money as well. So
the Steam deck will be safe, the Nintendo switch to
will be safe. These are companies that have stores that
generate a lot of money, so if they sell hardware
at a loss or break even or a slight profit,
they're not as worried about it as.
Speaker 3: A company like I and Neo would need to be.
Speaker 1: So we're probably in a world we're getting quite quite
a bit fewer of these handhelds, right Phil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what the hell?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I can't imagine going into this being like this is
my business model. I'm just going to make cool hardware.
Like I even think about all the retro handheld people,
right who are like making those little devices or what's
the one that you like the two screens that I
can't remember the.
Speaker 3: Name of, theayn thor Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well I have no idea how you make that work
as a business anymore. It is. It is kind of
fascinating because I feel like we are now coming back
around to the origins of computing, but in a like
compulsory way. That's frustrating because early on it was like
you had to rent a space on a computer. It
was like there was the computer you know in your
campus or company yep, and it was like, you know,
you were paying for timeshare on it. And it was
funny because at that time, that's when some of the
first computer games started happening, because people were like, Oh,
let's fuck around on this thing. It is very funny
that now it's coming back around and to like, well,
guess what, you have to rent it to have fun.
And it's like, it is funny that it was. It
used to be like, oh, we can rent time on
this thing, let's have fun. Now it's like, oh, man,
I have to rent time on this thing to have fun,
which is a very a very funny transition to have
made over the course of sixty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people worked so hard to make the affordable computing
thing where people can have it in their home and
own it, and it's like second nature it almost feels
like a utility, and so do we blink and suddenly
it's about, oh, you got to get your AI tokens
and your time on the server and rent this stuff
from Nvidia specifically. It's frustrating. Yeah, I expect this to
be a trend. We will probably see fewer of these.
Does this market recover after a while?
Speaker 3: I don't know. My guess would be like a lot
of the expertise.
Speaker 1: Has gone into this in places like China, find other
businesses and other industries where they can apply their hardware
expertise and maybe sell it to like enterprises for a
much higher amount of money. I bet that shifts and
they don't necessarily look back once things calm back down,
which would be a shame. It's been nice to have
a ton of competition in that space, driving down prices.
Speaker 2: I will say, my mom has a good joke I
think she stole from a comedian, probably about like inventions
that nowadays seem like, oh that's great because it's so
simple where it's like wow, instead of putting in contact,
you can just put these things on over your eyes.
And I almost wonder if five years it's going to
be like if and when prices come down, it's going
to be like, why you can buy a game system.
You don't have to subscribe to anything. You just put
the games on an SD card and you play it.
And like, does that have novelty at a certain point
to rebound that?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I expect that might exactly happen.
Speaker 1: Last story here, Square Inox was metacritics number one ranked
publisher last year thanks to nine quote good games. This
is from Andy Robertson at VGC. I do have the
list here. Squarennix was number one. Uh, then game Mirror
gamer but like spelled like game Mirror. Uh, that's gameier games.
They had a handful of games they had an eighty
two average on a Metacritic than Capcom, then Thunderful, then Microsoft,
take to Sega, Electronic Arts, Dot EMU, and raw Fury.
We're noting Nintendo not on the list. That's uh yeah,
PlayStation not on there as well. Uh you know these
are those are companies I think kind of I did
have a little bit below average year in terms of
how how their games were received. Uh does this sort
of thing matter, this perception around the bub publisher level.
Speaker 3: I think it's like.
Speaker 1: Capcom is definitely kind of writing that little bit of
that wave. Do you think other publishers can sort of
replicate that?
Speaker 2: I immediately when this came up, just honed in on whatever
the hell game Mirror is because I hadn't heard of them,
I mean looked them up and they did. They did
Dyson Sphere with their big one, but they also, like
on they just they have a lot of smaller games
I've never heard of, like typing break or hold the Mine.
And it's like that, you know, it doesn't say anything
about sales or sustainability or scale, but like that feels
like a hierarchy of power change when you have like
a company like that ranking above an Electronic Arts or
like a Thunderful relatively even with Sega, like that's kind
of a big deal. I feel like, again, that doesn't
say anything about their business model except maybe they are
people doing it sustainable at a smaller scale like that,
But that feels notable. That was the immediate standout to me.
Speaker 1: Yes, it definitely feels like there is an opportunity to
sort of establish yourself as a quality publisher and build that,
you know, build your name into that brand over time.
That we were talking about earlier and I do think
like some of like Nintendo's early woes with the switch
to this year, which you know, are maybe a bit overstated,
but it is notable that PlayStation five outsold the switch
to in January and February in the United States. I
think some of that does just come down to people
were not excited about most of your games. Most of
your games were either known quantities or disappointing, and like
Mario Tennis being a very good example of that. Although
that would not have been counted in this I believe
that would have been for this year's Metacritic. All right,
that does it for the headlines. We have a poll
question from Monday that we should get to. Let's do
that real quick. I'm gonna refresh. I'm curious about the
results from this one for sure. Okay, take your time
YouTube before refreshing. I believe this is I had you
all grade Crimson Desert there to finally loading.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad. I'm so glad it was here Wednesday
and I didn't have to register an opinion about Crimson
Desert this week. I'm just I'm relieved.
Speaker 1: But yes, just keep you know, stay that way, do
not change. You know, you keep yourself safe, all right.
If you've played Crimson Desert Grade it, the options were AB,
CD or lower. The most common response was B at
thirty seven percent, then C at twenty four percent, then
D or lower at twenty two percent, and A at
seventeen percent.
Speaker 3: Just it runs the gamut just across the board.
Speaker 1: People feel a way about this game, and it's a
it goes from a masterpiece all the way down to
I really don't like it at all.
Speaker 3: I mean officially divisive.
Speaker 1: I guess we could say this is an officially divisive game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think divisive is always a more interesting
place to be than a consensus or even a consensus good.
But yeah, this this is my impression of it, not
playing it is it's just like you go to the
butcher and you order five pounds a game with the
bone in and they just give it to you, and
like that's just just a slab of game. And it's
like some people are really into that. Not for me,
but I can see how people who are into that
would it would enjoy.
Speaker 3: It, yep. Man.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, people are clearly many how clearly
are and others clearly are having a problem, it's at
least fun to talk about. I still don't find the
game all that interesting from like, oh, what's going on here?
Speaker 3: Is that worth discussing?
Speaker 1: It's like, not not too much, but like, let's discuss
it because our RP people who are enjoying this and
I'm hating it. How can we sort of bridge that gap?
Speaker 3: And it's like we're not going to be able to,
but it's fun.
Speaker 1: To try to figure it out. All right, that's the
pull question from Monday. We'll have a new poll question
here in a second. Before we do that, Phil, why
don't you tell people where they can find you on
the internet what you have going on and all that
good stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm on Blue Sky. I think that's the only
social media place I'm active anymore. Phil Salve on Blue Sky.
I'm doing history stuff everywhere. We got all kinds of
things rolling out all the time of the Video Game
History Foundation, new collections coming out, podcast episodes.
Speaker 3: We are on a roll.
Speaker 2: We've got all sorts of cool things coming around. Currently
working on a big new collection we have in from
the history of Sunsoft. There's some good stuff in there.
Can't wait to share it with folks. That's still a
couple months out, but give us a follow support us.
We've got things in the pipeline, We've got things that
are out in the world that are probably new to you,
a lot of stuff coming through, never boring in this position.
Speaker 1: All the Sega channel stuff from last year was excellent.
Go watch all the the work that they've been doing.
It's been fantastic. I am looking forward to what's happening
with sun Soft as well. All right, new poll question,
I put that over there there. It is do you
have a PC gaming handheld?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: No, and I don't want one? No, but I plan
to get one. See how people are feeling about this.
We kind of check in on this topic every once
in a while, kind of let's see where people are
sitting with it right now. Maybe you got to switch
to and you to feel like I don't need one.
You can go ahead and post your feelings in the
comments as well. Jane always kind of scrolls through there
and sees what people are saying.
Speaker 2: If you want to move over to the S category
based on what we talked about today, now is the time, Like,
do not wait an additional week at this point if
you're trying to get one.
Speaker 1: That's he's right, he's right, move now, make it happen.
Those prices are just gonna keep going up.
Speaker 3: All right. So that's the new poll question.
Speaker 1: We'll get the results of that on tomorrow's show of
Games Mornings here on Giant Bomb. Speaking of Giant Bomb,
it's Wednesday. It's time to do more Blight Club. Everybody
and our space Ace it's happening.
Speaker 2: He said, he's only got like forty minutes left in though, right.
Speaker 3: I think it's just forty minutes. Yeah, I think he's
gonna boot up.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be like, yeah, if we look at the
timer here, you should don't have forty minutes last.
Speaker 2: Of the episode. Yeah, this is this should be the finale, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the run. This is this is it.
It's it's unbelievable. If you missed the last the first.
Speaker 3: Episode, everybody, you should go check it out. See the reveal.
Speaker 1: See how he is, uh, his tone changes. He seems
determined now, but we'll see if that lasts as he
gets back to.
Speaker 3: The game this week. Excuse me, all right, So.
Speaker 1: That's later we're doing I think we might be still
doing Voicemail Dump Truck today.
Speaker 3: That's that was the plan. Anyhow, that'll be after the
Blake Club.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it's gonna be a messy rest of the
week because many of us are heading off the packs.
You can get a game mess mornings tomorrow everybody. Friday,
we will not have an episode. Think me and Sean
are gonna piece together talking over that Microsoft thing.
Speaker 3: I think we'll just hang out.
Speaker 1: It'll be very chill because it's it's not even like
a developer direct. It's like a tier below that in
terms of excitement levels. But whatever, we'll hang out and
watch it together. It'll be a good time. And then
if you are going to be in Boston for Packs,
our panel schedules up on the website.
Speaker 3: It's on the reddit. We posted it on Blue Sky
check it out come say hi, we would love to
see you.
Speaker 1: We're going to be on the show floor doing some
this is the run. We're going to be on the
Albatrust stage on Saturday doing our panel where we're blading Vinnie.
Speaker 3: It is going to be a lot of fun. Why oh,
you're asking why is it named that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they I do know that there's some reasoning
to it. If it's a bird, it means it's on
the second level, and if it's like a land creature,
it's on the first level. Why albatross specifically, not sure,
but I think there's a much different birds more so
that's fascinating to me. All Right, there we go, everybody.
We're looking forward to seeing you at packs.
Speaker 3: I think with all of that.
Speaker 1: Out of the way, though, what we should do now
is say thank you Phil for hanging out with me
and talking about video games.
Speaker 3: Man, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely happy to be on. Even I have limited perspective
on current things, but happy to to to muddle through it.
Speaker 1: It's uh no, it's it's fantastic. We love your insight,
We appreciate it. We'll get you back on again sometime soon.
In the meantime, everybody, thank you for listening and watching.
You are the best audience in gaming. Until next time,
have a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.